The U.S. House of Representatives is debating Republican-backed legislation that would eliminate any funds for military maneuvers in the Balkans after September 30. Democrats have retorted that such a move would potentially threaten the peace process and have vowed to try to block the measure. Partisan squabbles aside, the underlying debate is significant. Now that NATO has apparently found a way into Kosovo, when and how will it leave? The temporary NATO presence in Bosnia has been repeatedly extended, with no end in sight. U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen has refused to put a time limit on U.S. and NATO commitment to Kosovo peacekeeping operations, noting only that the U.S. will "do our best to facilitate the transformation of Kosovo into a self-governing province under the aegis of NATO and the UN."

After four years and counting of an SFOR presence in Bosnia, that country – or is it "countries" – shows little sign that it will remain stable and intact should NATO leave. The Bosnian confederation is a temporary fiction created and enforced by NATO forces. Its constituent parts are not even viable entities. The two groups joined in the Moslem and Croat Federation fought against each other during the civil war as often as they fought alongside one another, and the Republika Srpska would just as soon merge with mother Serbia if given half a chance. Never mind that Bosnia’s constituent republics are divided only along the latest lines of combat and ethnic cleansing, lines that have changed in the past and will no doubt be changed in the future.

None of the underlying conflicts in Bosnia have been resolved, and no amount of manipulation of Bosnian faction leadership by NATO is going to install a group that will fundamentally reject the age old interests and animosities of the region’s warring ethnic groups. The only thing that can stabilize the existing boundaries in the region is to make them defensible, and were the Moslem, Croat, and Serb factions to rearm so that they can defend their borders, they could just as easily keep arming to "retake what is rightfully theirs."

Kosovo is no different. When can KFOR leave? When the Serbs forget battling the Ottoman Turks for Kosovo? When KFOR reverses the tide of ethnic cleansing and arms an independent Albanian Kosova? Or, like SFOR in Bosnia, or the U.S. in Korea, or the UN in Cyprus, Lebanon, and elsewhere, is KFOR now a permanent resident – guaranteeing borders that would, under any other circumstances, be temporary at best?